It's Almost Christmas Time! - Nov 30

Well Thanksgiving came and went and you know what that means. Um, I guess it means it was time to dig out and pull down the Christmas decorations from the garage! Because Chloe has been almost 1, almost 2, and now almost 3 for each Christmas we have celebrated she has a pretty good concept of the holiday(as far as a kid is concerned). She remembers the tree, putting up the decorations, seeing Santa, opening presents..the whole 9 yards. She was super excited for the tree to go up and even more excited to put up all the ornaments. In her excitement she accidentally broke her Buzz Lightyear ornament that I searched high and low for last year. Snapped his leg off right at the knee. Fortunately, after several attempts I was able to glue it back on but we will have to be more careful if it's going to survive much longer, lol.

We decorated the tree but for the first time since we have lived here(5+ years) it seemed like it would be nice to put up some lights on the house itself so the other day while Heather was at work I pulled out the lights and ladder and Chloe "helped" me put up a few strands. Basically, she handed me the hooks and played with the lights but she felt like she was doing a lot so that's what counts. =)
It's gonna be a rainy weekend so I'm glad we got that out of the way and hopefully we can enjoy it for the rest of the year!
Have a great weekend~

-B





A cluster of ornaments where Chloe can reach, lol


Our newest "2012" ornaments - Wall-e & EVE from Disneyland and Lightning McQueen from CVS(lol)

It's Happy Thanksgiving Time! - Nov 23

Every year the holidays sneak up on us..at least that's how it feels. Like one minute you are jamming into summer and then before you know it we are on a Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Chloe's Birthday roller coaster. Maybe it was because the big thing on my mind was Paula & Phil's wedding that Thanksgiving kind of slipped my mind. We certainly know we have a lot to be thankful for every day and of course high up on the list of things we are thankful for is our loving families. We spent our Thanksgiving with both sides of our family...we ate twice and right now I regret it but at the time it seemed like a fantastic idea. Chloe kept telling everyone " Happy Thanksgiving!" and on the way home she saw some Christmas lights on some trees and she said "It's Christmas time now!!" This kid. =)

Anyway, with Thanksgiving time comes the awesome fall colors and leaves on the ground. I have been meaning to get out in our complex and shoot some pictures of Chloe playing in the leaves but the landscape crews go around constantly cleaning up all the leaves. It's like they can't allow it to be fall around here! The other night it was getting dark and I noticed the tree a few houses down from ours had dropped some leaves that day so we ran down there and I snapped a few. I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving whatever you did and have a great weekend, folks.

-B

Auntie Paula's Gonna Step On Them! - Nov 16

You may or may not have heard that last week my brother got married! He is now officially "Uncle Phil" and Paula is officially "Auntie Paula". =)

Chloe was very excited about her role as a flower girl, even though she really had no idea what it meant. She knew she was going to wear a pretty dress and pretty shoes, but beyond that, nothing. Heather spent some time at home teaching Chloe about her job and how she would be walking down the aisle in front of Paula dropping flowers. It was so cute, you would ask her "hey Chloe, what are you going to do at Paula & Phil's wedding?" to which she would reply (in a huge run on sentence and in various order)..
"It's going to be a very quiet show and there will be music and I will wear a pretty dress and no talking and no goofing around and I will drop flowers aaaaaaaand PAULA'S GONNA STEP ON THEM!"

Needless to say, when the time came it didn't entirely go as expected. She got about half way down the aisle and her bracelet got stuck on her basket and came off so she wanted someone to help her put it back on, meanwhile the other two flower girls were going around doing who knows what. Eventually, they all made it down the aisle and it was a cute moment but it was very funny to watch. The next part to worry about was getting 3 (almost and about 3 year old girls) to sit down in the front row for about 30 minutes. Someone had the awesome idea to go get "ring pops" which totally did the trick. I am told that Chloe started singing "happy birthday to you" when Paula & Phil were lighting the unity candle. LOL.
Anyway, I just have a few pictures as I'm not going to "spoil" anything by posting pictures from the wedding before Paula & Phil return from their honeymoon, so here are a few from the before, during, and after events of the days surrounding the wedding.
Have a great weekend. ~
B



That photo is of Chloe and one of the other flower girls, Olivia. Olivia wanted nothing to do with Chloe when they first met and by the end of the weekend they were asking for each other to play. Cute.



Who do you think is the troublemaker of these 3?? Who do you think is the oldest?(hint, it's not Chloe)


The day after the wedding we went to "Fairy Tale Land" with all of our cousins/etc.

Hello, Kitty! - Nov 9

Well, I'm writing this on Wednesday because the next two days are going to be pretty much consumed with wedding festivities for us. This time my "little" brother is getting married and the wedding is on Friday. Chloe will get to be a flower girl which we have been practicing dropping flower(and telling her about being quiet for the ceremony, etc) here so we will see how that goes! I will be the Best Manographer which is a term I just made up. Yes, it means what you think it does. =P

As I sometimes do, these shots are just me randomly goofing around with the camera and I actually came away with some shots of Chloe I really like. The last shot I have printed and it's like one of the most amazing shots of her I have taken of her in a while. Maybe it won't translate on the screen but I think it's awesome. I joke with people because it always looks like she is a perfect photo subject and people tell me that all the time. "She must just love having her picture taken!" LOL. Nothing could be further from the truth. I amaze myself sometimes when I come away with a certain shot because even I don't think I got "the shot". Anyway, we are off having fun so have a great weekend and enjoy a few pics.

Brian!

I Want Some Candy, Please! - Nov 2

Each year Halloween has become more and more fun for Chloe. It just so happens that this year Chloe understands what "candy" is after a few birthday parties and whatever else, she is a typical kid that fiends after a sugar high, lol. We have been explaining to Chloe for a few weeks now how the whole process works(even though she did fine last year). She understood to go up and say trick or treat, then they were to give her a piece of candy and she was to say thank you. She did pretty good but she certainly had her eyes on the prize this year and she was ready to go to the next house with or without us.

Of all the years we have lived here there has never been a single trick or treater and no possibility of anyone trick or treating the houses in here. This year it's a little different as I have mentioned before we have a "new" neighbor lady who is truly one of the nicest people ever. Her grand kids were not up here for Halloween(who can blame them, it sucks up here for candy!) but she was very excited for us to stop by so she could see Chloe. She had a little bag of gummy bears for Chloe and the granddaughter that Chloe really likes (Alexa) left a hello kitty key chain for Chloe. The daylight was burning rapidly so we stopped by our respective families houses and let Chloe "ding the bell" and show of her "BEAUTIFUL FAIRY COSTUME!". Side-note, when we purchased her costume like a month ago it fit just fine and apparently she grew taller because it was pretty obvious it was an inch to small from the last time we put it on. LOL. We met up with our friends and their kids and trick or treated their neighborhood which is what we have done for the last several years now.

We saw some friends, we trick or treated and of course there are some pics. Have a great weekend~
-B



















some of "the clan"

We're Going To Cars Land! - Oct 26

Disneyland.

This marks the 3rd trip in about a years time that we have gone to Disneyland. Chloe from 22 months old (when we took her the first time) has been able to recount her favorite things. She knew this time that we were going to see the new "Cars Land" and has been telling us for weeks how she's going to see "Mater" & "McQueen". She went through a kick where she was completely over everything else and wanted to only watch the movie "Cars". I've seen some pictures and I was looking forward to checking it all out as well. We went for 2 days in the parks spending the first day in Disneyland and the 2nd day in the California Adventure park(home of the new "Cars Land"). I have to admit I was a little apprehensive about going back to Disneyland after already going twice in what I would call a short period of time but I have to say this was the best trip so far. Chloe was absolutely amazing. Walking around holding our hands, standing in line and being patient for each ride..no meltdowns and no real problems to speak of for 2 full days and we were in the parks basically open to close. I can only hope future trips are this way..
We drove down a few days early to spend the weekend with our friends in San Diego and while we were there we hit up a pumpkin patch that can only be described as a county fair. This pumpkin patch had rides, games, food, animals..it's like the pumpkins were an afterthought. Overall we had a nice little mini-vacation for a few days and while I would say I tried not to focus on not taking a million pictures and enjoying my vacation, I still snapped quite a bit. Whoops. Well, as usual I'll just share some pics of our trip and some of the stuff that we saw and did. Have a great weekend!

Enjoy~
B







































We did this a year ago so I thought it would be neat to do it again. I'll have to take a picture of the two side by side..pretty amazing/interesting they were both done by separate artists and they both look alike. My favorite souvenir in the park..